What is the origin of plebeian?

English plebeian, adjective and noun, ultimately derives from the Latin adjective and noun plēbēius “pertaining to the common people, a commoner.” The adjective also meant “common, ordinary, everyday” and was usually disparaging. Plēbēius derives from the noun plebs (also plēbēs, stem plēb-) “the general citizenry (as opposed to the patricians)." Plebs (plēbēs) is akin to Greek plêthos “great number, multitude, the majority of people, the commons”; the Latin and Greek nouns derive from a Proto-Indo-European plēdhwo-, ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European root pele-, plē- “to fill.” Plebeian entered English in the 16th century.

How is plebeian used?

It outfitted all the high-touch areas of the penthouse (like the bannister on the staircase) in an antimicrobial coating, so you don’t have to deal with such plebeian concerns as germs.
Elizabeth Segran, "This $26 million penthouse is the Goop of luxury real estate," Fast Company, July 17, 2019

The British Prime Minister, Theresa May, dons bifocals when she appears before the House of Commons, as if to advertise her sympathetic connection to the plebeian indignities of embodiment.
Katy Waldman, "Kyrsten Sinema and Statement Glasses in the Senate," The New Yorker, November 15, 2018

donnybrook

What is the origin of donnybrook?

Donnybrook is the English spelling of the English pronunciation of Irish Domhnach Broc “Church of (St.) Broc.” Domhnach also means “Sunday” in Irish and comes from Latin (Diēs) Dominica “Lord’s (Day).” Little is known of St. Broc, who founded a church in the 8th century at the location of Donnybrook Cemetery in Dublin, Ireland.
In 1204 the English King John (“famous” for the Magna Carta) granted a charter for an annual fair, at first like an American county fair, featuring livestock and produce, but later developing into a carnival, a medieval Irish Coney Island, beset with drunks and brawlers. During the 1790s campaigns against the fair began; prominent citizens purchased the royal charter, and they had the fair shut down in 1866. The Donnybrook Fair grounds are now the Donnybrook Rugby Ground.
Donnybrook entered English in the mid-19th century.

How is donnybrook used?

Now the New York hotel and restaurant workers' local is threatening a "donnybrook" if it doesn't get a contract at the Portman.
"Portman's New Headache," New York, March 22, 1982

On Monday, when the panel conducted a hearing about the Mueller report, there was a partisan donnybrook.
Jeffrey Toobin, "The House Judiciary Committee Considers Antitrust Law, the Tech Giants, and the Future of News," The New Yorker, June 14, 2019

subitize

What is the origin of subitize?

Subitize is a useful word in psychology regardless of the awkwardness of its formation. The first part of the word, subit-, comes from the Late Latin verb subitāre “to come suddenly and unexpectedly upon” (a derivative of the adjective subitus “sudden, abrupt”). The familiar, completely naturalized suffix -ize ("to render, make; convert into; subject to; etc.") comes via Late Latin -izāre from Greek -ízein.

How is subitize used?

Below five, we’re able to subitize, or rapidly judge numbers of items without counting.
Steph Yin, "Do You Know What Lightning Really Looks Like?" New York Times, June 11, 2018

Getting the computer model to subitize the way humans and animals did was possible, he found, only if he built in “number neurons” tuned to fire with maximum intensity in response to a specific number of objects.
Jim Holt, "Numbers Guy," The New Yorker, February 24, 2008

utopian

What is the origin of utopian?

The English adjective and noun utopian comes from New Latin Ūtopiānus, an adjective derived from the noun Ūtopia, a quasi-Greek noun meaning “no place,” formed from the negative adverb and particle ou “not” ("quasi-Greek" because in Greek ou cannot be used as a prefix for nouns), top-, the stem of the noun tópos “a place,” and the noun suffix -ia (the adjective suffix -ānus is purely Latin). Ūtopia is a coinage of Sir Thomas More’s in his 1516 satire Dē optimō reīpublicae statū dēque novā insulā Ūtopiā ("Concerning the Best State of a Republic [Commonwealth] and Concerning the New Island Utopia"). In English, but not in other languages, the first syllable of Ūtopia rhymes with the prefix eu- (as in Euclid or Eucharist); thus in English there is a confusion between Ūtopia “no place” and Eutopia “good place, a place of happiness and felicity.”

How is utopian used?

For its proponents, it offered a utopian vision of an art world in which color and class barriers were finally dismantled.
Holland Cotter, "Beyond Multiculturalism, Freedom?" New York Times, July 29, 2001

At a time of such social, political and ecological upheaval, it’s natural to dream of a utopian world in which these problems are no more—in fact, people have been doing it for centuries.
Heather Alberro, "Utopia isn't just idealistic fantasy—it inspires people to change the world," TheConversation, June 21, 2019

shivaree

What is the origin of shivaree?

The etymology of shivaree is obscure. Most authorities consider it to be a Mississippi Valley French alteration (or a vulgar corruption) of French charivari, a noun of obscure origin, said to be from Late Latin carībaria “headache,” from Greek karēbaría, equivalent to karē-, a combining form of kárā, kárē “head,” and the noun suffix -baría “heaviness” (from barýs “heavy” and the abstract noun suffix -ía). Supposedly such a racket would give someone a headache.
Other authorities claim that shivaree comes from French chez vous “at your home” and list many variants in spelling (and presumably in pronunciation): chevaux, cheveaux, chev-ho, chivoo, shavoo, sheave-o, sheavo, sheevo, shevoo, shivaree, shivaroo, shiveree, shiverree, shivoe.
Vulgar or not, shivaree was noble enough for Mark Twain to use it (in that spelling) in A Tramp Abroad (1880): "... she turned on all the horrors of the ‘Battle of Prague,’ that venerable shivaree, and waded chin deep in the blood of the slain.” Charivari entered English in the first half of the 19th century. Shivaree seems to have entered English in 1875.

How is shivaree used?

"Let's give the governor and his lady a real shivaree!" Nearly a hundred drunks assembled outside the tavern with horns and drums and washboards and bugles and tin pots.
James A. Michener, Texas, 1985

Encouraging cake mashing, like a host of other awful wedding customs, from shivaree (a noisy mock serenade on the wedding night) to tying a tin can to the newlyweds’ getaway car, is one last chance for the couple’s friends to indulge in the game of “X and Y, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.”
Charles Perry, "Cake Smashing," Los Angeles Times, February 26, 1997

fascicle

What is the origin of fascicle?

The noun fascicle “a bunch, bundle” has always been a technical term, restricted to botany and anatomy. Even in its publishing sense, “a section of a book or set of books published in installments as separate pamphlets or volumes,” fascicle is a technical term. Fascicle comes from Latin fasciculus (also the source of fascicule) “a small bundle, packet, parcel,” a diminutive of the noun fascis “a bundle (e.g., of sticks, wood, books). The fascēs, the plural of fascis, were the bundle of rods about five feet long, bound by red leather bands around an ax that in Republican times was used as an instrument of execution. The fascēs were the primary visible symbol of a higher Roman magistrate’s power and authority. They were carried by lictors: twelve fascēs for consuls and proconsuls (and for kings in the regal period); six fascēs for praetors and Masters of the Horse; and twenty-four fascēs for dictators. Fascis or fascēs becomes fascio in Italian, meaning “bundle of sticks.” The Roman fascēs were adopted as the symbol of the Partito Nazionale Fascista (“National Fascist Party”) organized by Benito Mussolini in 1919, the same year as the appearance of the English noun fascists.Fascicle entered English in the 17th century.

How is fascicle used?

... she gathered her poems into forty homemade books, known as “fascicles,” by folding single sheets of blank paper in half to form four consecutive pages ....
Dan Chiasson, "Emily Dickinson's Singular Scrap Poetry," The New Yorker, November 27, 2016

... he knew what he sought, and found exactly that, the fascicles dwindling like melting ice-shards, verso words showing through ....
William T. Vollmann, "The Cemetery of the World," Last Stories and Other Stories, 2014

cat’s-paw

What is the origin of cat's-paw?

In English cat's-paw originally meant “a person used to serve the purposes of another; tool.” The term comes from a Le Singe et le Chat, “The Monkey and the Cat,” a fable by Jean de La Fontaine (1621–1695), the French poet and collector of fairy tales, in which a monkey persuades a cat to pull chestnuts out of hot coals that the chestnuts are roasting in and promises to share the chestnuts with the cat. The cat scoops the chestnuts one by one out of the coals, burning his paw in the process, while the monkey eats up the chestnuts. A maid enters the room, stopping all the action, and the cat gets nothing for its pains. Both nautical senses, “a light breeze on the surface of the water” and "a kind of knot made in the bight of a rope,” date from the second half of the 18th century. Cat's-paw entered English in the second half of the 17th century.

How is cat's-paw used?

I believe these people are simply using you as a cats-paw.
Victor Bridges, A Rogue by Compulsion, 1915

... we should not take these fifty-one painters and sculptors ... too seriously. In a certain sense they are mere cat's-paws.
"Are They Only Cat's-Paws?" New York Times, April 5, 1909